


this is the only place for me

by miabicicletta



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:51:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She is islanded in a peaceable, saltwater universe, alone, with only the splashing and the gulls and a pale moon low in the sky."</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the only place for me

**Author's Note:**

> Kara Thrace, surfer-girl. This universe just makes perfect sense to me. Title comes from [a tune by the pretty/haunting beach-band, Best Coast](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUMYabwn3wc&list=PLD1E81C8857E7CA89).

___

There is nothing else for Kara Thrace except being out on the water. There is nothing in this life that even touches it.

She waits for the morning tide, bobbing on her board a half-mile out, above a coral reef of remora and ghost ships. Around her the water is glassy and bright, light glinting off the surface in a slow, musical cadence. The wind skips up the tops of whitecaps that rush in on the rising tide. It is calm, quiet. She feels subdued by the water – by its big, gentle rhythm – and the feeling goes down deep to some elemental part of her, down through her blood, through cells, past strands of DNA and chromosomes, into molecules and the atoms that were born to her in the first fires of the universe. Those parts of the universe will be hers forever.

Here, she is islanded in a peaceable, saltwater universe, alone, surrounded only by the soft splashing sounds and the gulls and a pale moon low in the sky. Untroubled, she floats on her wobbly board, watching as the last lingerings of darkness are swept away by daybreak.

Then.

The moment she waits for during every other hazy and half-lived minute of her life – when the water climbs up, there, right _there_ , in the exact spot she’s been watching since dawn, and she knows with perfect certainty that the next swell is hers.

She kicks into place, watching over her shoulder, sliding through the water with a few hard strokes. Not tough to do after all the nights she’s spent dragging kegs up and down the narrow stairs of the shitty little dive where she pulls pints to keep the lights on at home (also a dive). The board picks up a little, her feet rising a touch higher than the rest of her body. She paddles harder.

The swell comes in fast. She kicks like her life depends on it, fights to keep the course, to stay level, so that when her wall of water meets the sand, she’ll be there on the edge, almost in the maelstrom, and then...

_Jump._

...that sweet, sweet plummet into the barrel of the wave, like being in free-fall, like being hurled over a cliff, and the whole world disappears in a sunshining flash of fluid ultramarine. The narrow blue speed is like flying, or fighting, and she’s swept up by the adrenaline rush of both. Her board launches through the blue, nothing between her and the hungry water as she picks up more speed, rocketing to escape velocity. She crouches low, leaning into the curl, feet hugging at the deck of the board; the roar of the ocean is in her ears and spray in her eyes.

This is her windy blue-green heaven, and it is as wide and uncaring as the sky it mirrors. For once she’s not some class-A island fuckup. There’s no shitty bar-back job in the marina or a deadbeat dad and self-medicating psychopath of a mother. There’s no bad blood; no wrong, no right. Out here, she doesn’t need hope, or help, either. Just sun and sky and a wave to chase, the spray falling on her head like raindrops. This is her salvation. It’s her penance, too. She doesn’t need to look any further than the Adama name on her board to remember that.

Her nose and lungs fill with the old mineral smell of ocean. She reaches out to touch the glassy barrel, and her fingers peel off flashy little pearls of water that fly beside her, a shiny trail of shooting stars.

Here she’s alive, just her, and nothing but the almost-rain.

She edges the board faster before the wave reaches the end of the line, the froth running around her, the engine-loud roar quieting to a purr as it runs itself out, petering toward the shallows.

She laughs, diving into the water where the warm current welcomes her, giving way to cooler depths. The board above jerks in the whitewater of another crashing wave, pulling at her ankle. She flips, kicks off the white, sandy bottom. Her board rises above her, the leash floating up, a lifeline. She follows it, back to the light, and the world that waits.

There is nothing else for Kara Thrace except being out on the water.

Nothing in this life that even touches it.

\---

As always, comments are appreciated and adored. I feel more of this set coming. Call it fanfic weather.


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